Dreams of division

As I write this post, Deacon Royce Winters, head of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s Office of African American Affairs, is leading an official celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the late Dr. Martin Luther King’s marvelous “I Have a Dream” speech and the March on Washington. Winters is a curious choice. The weekend after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, Winters sternly rebuked a priest of the archdiocese for failing to devote his homily to Obama’s victory. One wonders what he would make of Obama’s point-scoring, race-baiting commemoration of Dr. King’s message of fraternity and conciliation earlier today:

The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold into the middle class, reduced the bargaining power of American workers.

And our politics has suffered. Entrenched interests — those who benefit from an unjust status quo resisted any government efforts to give working families a fair deal, marshaling an army of lobbyists and opinion makers to argue that minimum wage increases or stronger labor laws or taxes on the wealthy who could afford it just to fund crumbling schools — that all these things violated sound economic principles.

We’d be told that growing inequality was the price for a growing economy, a measure of the free market — that greed was good and compassion ineffective, and those without jobs or health care had only themselves to blame.

And then there were those elected officials who found it useful to practice the old politics of division, doing their best to convince middle-class Americans of a great untruth, that government was somehow itself to blame for their growing economic insecurity — that distant bureaucrats were taking their hard-earned dollars to benefit the welfare cheat or the illegal immigrant.

17 Responses to “Dreams of division”

Dr. King didn’t use his Dream speech to attribute base motives to others or take potshots at those with whom he disagreed. It would have been appropriate, and sadly surprising, for Obama to have followed his lead.

“But the good news is, just as was true in 1963, we now have a choice. We can continue down our current path in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations, where politics is a zero-sum game, where a few do very well while struggling families of every race fight over a shrinking economic pie. That’s one path. Or we can have the courage to change.”

I don’t recall MLK ever couching his speeches in what is essentially, “Agree with me and obey or we alll die.”

Actually, I take that back. I think MLK did play good cop in a Mutt and Jeff routine with violent black radicals. Malcom X and H Rap Brown told America “We’re crazy and we’re going to kill you.” and MLK more or less saying, “Those guys? They’re crazy and going to kill you. Give me and mine power and influence and maybe we can stop them.”

The concept of a “living wage” is something only someone with an elementary understanding economics would support.

Anyone that knows how to use simple root cause analysis would understand that if the “poor” were “paid a living wage” (this wage of course being arbitrarily set by political Leftist) than prices would rise in proportion to the wages, to the point at which their wage would no longer be a “living wage.”
Give poor people a “living wage,” and the $3 box of chicken McNuggets they depend on to feed their kids, will instead cost $10-15.

That is probably why you don’t find “living wage” in the Catechism, but instead find “just wage”. CCC2434. Living wage I think comes from cherry-picking 2434 and quoting, “Remuneration for work should guarantee man the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for himself”, but conveniently forgetting, “In determining fair pay both the needs and the contributions of each person must be taken into account.”

“I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification,…”

The President, more kindly than Dr. King, stood up for the Voting Rights Act that Dr. King had so ably worked for.

I was at the 1963 March along with a group of liberal activist Catholics. I can tell you Dr. King was not universally loved at that time. For that matter, there were a lot of unkind things said about Archbishop O’Boyle by some of the conservative Catholics.

To be clear, you stand by Obama’s race-baiting, appalling depiction of his political opponents? Further, you believe his depiction of Republicans (since it’s clear who he’s talking about) is consistent with Dr. King’s observations about “vicious racists” (who curiously enough were almost exclusively Democrats)? God save us from jacobins disguised as “liberal Catholic activists.”

1. I didn’t see any race baiting or appalling depiction in the President’s remarks. 2. Along with the President and Dr. King, I support the Voting Rights Act. 3. Do you think the work I did against segregation, first in my parish church and school and later in society in general makes me a jacobins from which God needed to save others from?

Just because a Catholic cleric coined the term, doesn’t necessarily mean it is “Catholic.” I know an Augustinian priest that coined “sola scriptura” but didn’t mean it is Catholic.

And not to get off on a tangent, but I thought I read somewhere that the term “Rt Rev” is complete BS and that it is actually just “Rev.” I can’t remember where I read it, or the exact details, but if anyone has anymore incite into the term “Rt Rev” can you please share?

1. I find it sad that you would associate a holy,orthodox and thoughtful man like Msgr. Ryan with a noted heretic.

2. John A. Ryan was accorded the honorific “Rt. Rev. Msgr.” by the Holy Father Pope Pius. Prior to that honor, he was generally referred to as “Dr. Ryan” as the custom of the time in the English speaking world was for priests to be referred to with that academic degree as “Doctor” rather than “Father.” That custom seems to have fallen into disuse in the postwar period.

1. You’re probably right. I don’t know a lick about Msgr. Ryan, and it was a very simplistic analogy on my part.

2. Thank you for the info. I understand how priest can have the honorific of Monsignor bestowed on them, but I’m curious about “Reverend” vs “Right Reverend” and where the term “Right Reverend” comes from. Again, thank you for the info.

Don’t forget your main point undamaged by any responses here, which is that one priest inventing a locution does not a Magisterial teaching make. Heck, even 200 priests and a handful of bishops agreeing with the locution does not a Magisterial teaching make.